


eremin fic collection

by searwrites (sears)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Fic Collection, M/M, each chapter is its own fic, see each chapter summary for fic warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-24 06:18:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1594673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sears/pseuds/searwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>originally posted to tumblr</p><p>----------</p><p>these were all originally prompts from my askbox on tumblr. each chapter is its own respective fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lalochezia

**Author's Note:**

> original prompt: Lalochezia(The use of abusive language to relieve stress or ease pain)
> 
> warnings for bullying, homophobic slurs, etc etc

When Armin was little, Eren used to call him a princess.

And it wasn’t anything out of spite, or it was never intended to be insulting, it was just what he thought - just the way he saw Armin at the time, through fairy tale glasses, as something up above him, maybe just barely out of reach.

He used to braid Armin’s hair, going off of memory from watching Mikasa do it so many times, but he usually ended up frustrated and ended up leaving Armin’s hair looking like an upturned bird’s nest of sorts. He was pretty in a boy way, he was soft in a way that wasn’t as scary or threatening as the way girls were. He let Eren’s sticky hands grip his hair in pigtails at the sides of his head, and he laughed, because Eren would smile like an idiot and lead him around his house that way. Mikasa was never into girl things, really, but Armin always read him stories about royalty, painted pictures of princes going on epic battles to save their princesses from peril - it just… made _sense_ to think of him that way.

It isn’t so amusing now, when other people call him that.

Eren feels almost protective of it, in a way. Only _he_ was ever allowed to say those things, and it always meant something specific to _them_.

And they don’t mean it the way he did. They say other things, too, cruel things, not just ‘princess’. They say it with venom, not with a gentle kind of reverence, not in awe of something your innocence sees as magical.

So yeah, it pisses Eren off. Especially since Armin isn’t exactly a princess now, at least not by his standards.

“Why in the fuck do you let them say that shit to you, dude?”

Armin manages to shrug and hitch his backpack higher up over his shoulders at the same time. “It doesn’t bother me.”

Eren stomps after him, rubber soles of his shoes slapping against the shitty linoleum floor in the hallway, the rays of the afternoon sun making the yellow lockers look more orange.

“How can it not bother you?” he practically shrieks, and then tugs at the handle of Armin’s backpack to get him to stop walking, to force him to face him here.

Armin shrugs, sighs helplessly. “I don’t know it just… doesn’t.”

Eren scoffs. He’s so angry his jaw clicks, his neck sore from being so tense after following Armin out here from the complete opposite end of the classroom. He would punch each of their faces right through to the other sides of their skulls if he knew he could get away with it, would make them grind their own teeth into bone powder, would fuck their entire world for giving Armin just a small moment of pain.

Except he really _doesn’t_ seem bothered. Eren is so angry his heart feels like a boot kicking beneath his ribs, but Armin has a strangely sympathetic smile, looks more confused than upset.

“Cool, so, you’re happy being the class fairy then?” Eren says cruelly, and there’s something oddly satisfying about watching Armin’s innocent smile drop slowly from his face. “You’re good with them tagging your desk with ‘fag’, right, cause that’s what you are? The fucking toe-touching fairy princess, congratulations Armin.”

If ever a face could be broken by Eren, it’s Armin’s. No need for fists or punches. His chin is crinkled, eyes squinted nearly shut like he’s shielding himself from Eren’s words somehow.

“Eren, what—”

But Eren has a point to make. It does hurt, even if he can’t explain why when it’s never directed at him. His brain tells him he wants Armin to hurt, that seeing this face on Armin is better than watching the placatingly calm smile sit there like it doesn’t know any better.

Eren pushes right past Armin, walks through the doors now warmed from the glare of the sun. He can skip his last class, no one will notice. What hurts the most is that Armin never lets Eren stand up for him anymore. That once Eren was maybe Armin’s prince, at least a little. Now it’s like he’s embarrassed whenever Eren outwardly says he cares, so fuck it— he’ll just stop caring.

—

Eren hears it first from Mikasa, because he’s nothing if he’s not oblivious at all hours of the day, and Mikasa always prides herself in being able to read people, even if she has a much cooler and more cosmopolitan group of friends now. She probably wouldn’t have said anything either, not if it weren’t for seeing that Armin hadn’t tried to talk to him all day.

“He asked me if you were mad at him,” she said, ignoring him in favor of whatever was on the screen of her laptop at the moment. “Which means he’s mad at you.”

“ _What_? Why?”

Mikasa levelled him a look that spoke a thousand words, but the few she actually spoke packed enough of a punch.

“Because you bullied him at school, Eren, why do you think?”

He’d practically sputtered and screamed. _No, it couldn’t be bullying, he’s my best friend,_ he’d rambled. _I was showing him what it sounds like, I just wanted him to know._

The more he rationalized it in his head the more he understood. He fucked up. Big.

.

  
Which is why he’s here at some ungodly hour of the night, balanced on the upper ledge of Armin’s roof, shoes squeaking against the rims of the gutters when he nearly slips and falls clear off of it. A sane person would probably throw rocks at his window, or perhaps even pick up a phone and call, but that leaves too much room for rejection, no- no, he needs to make sure Armin sees how sorry he is, preferably before he even opens the window.

Armin jerks around once Eren starts pounding on the glass, crouched down and clutching the framing so hard his knuckles are white. Armin rips out his headphones and then nearly trips on the short run to the window, makes a motion for Eren to move his fingers out the way so he can lift it to let him in.

“I thought you said you didn’t care,” Eren practically yells, eyes wild and hair tousled by the strong gusts of wind whipping this high up around Armin’s house.

“ _What_?” Armin asks, reaching out for Eren’s forearms to pull him inside, but Eren doesn’t notice.

“What I said. You said you didn’t care when people called you that shit.”

Armin rolls his eyes, “Jesus, Eren, come inside.”

Eren falls through the window on a particularly strong yank from Armin. Armin helps him up and then shivers as he slams down his window, peering outside to catch the first few drops of rain Eren managed to avoid in his impeccable timing.

Eren frowns hard at Armin, realizes immediately that his fussing at the window and at re-positioning the desk beneath it is just to avoid Eren, despite him being stood right in the middle of his room.

“Armin—”

“ _Alright_ , Eren, I get it. I don’t care, okay, but I care when it’s _you_ ,” Armin snaps, voice full of force, before he crawls back in on himself, shrinks down self consciously. “I care when it’s you because I care about what you think of me.”

Armin’s face is breaking again- shards of glass falling from vaulted ceilings, the kind that are stained colors and help paint pretty pictures. The kind that royalty would have in their rooms- Armin is precious and Eren is the only one capable of breaking him.

This is a whole different kind of hurt.

“You know I don’t think that,” Eren says, his voice thick with emotion. “I was just. I was angry because you weren’t reacting to them.”

“Why should I react?” Armin asks, his voice sharp, tossing his hands helplessly into the air and then letting them fall limp at his sides. The small distance between them is suddenly the thing Eren hates most in the world. “Why should it bother me?”

“I don’t know, okay?” Eren says, almost pleading. He approaches Armin fast, a snap decision, wraps his arms around his shoulders and pulls him into his chest. “It just… it bothers _me_ , alright, to hear them say that shit about you.”

“What do you want me to do about it?” Armin mumbles. He burrows his face deep in Eren’s chest, wraps arms around his waist.

Eren threads his fingers through Armin’s hair, a little damp from clutching onto the roof of Armin’s house, but Armin has never complained about Eren accidentally tugging on his hair before.

“Nothing, I just— _fuck,_ I love you Armin. You know that, right? That I love you?”

Eren pulls back a little as he says it, forces Armin to look at him, jerking his chin up with his hands when Armin tries to hide in his tshirt. He’s blushing, cheeks and the bridge of his nose burning pink. It’s a pretty color on him, still.

Armin makes a soft helpless whimpering noise and jerks away from Eren’s hand, presses his nose into Eren’s neck like he’s hiding there, like Eren can still keep him safe - even if it’s sometimes from himself.

“I love you too,” he mumbles back quietly.

Eren squeezes his hands in Armin’s hair, presses Armin as close as he could possibly be. His heart feels like it’s on wheels, unsteady and moving way too fast.

“Fuck, you’re so cute, why doesn’t anybody ever tell you that instead,” Eren mumbles without thinking.

And he can feel Armin grin against his neck as he does.

“Because that would probably be kind of awkward,” Armin says, laughing a little.

“Yeah.” Eren presses his face into Armin’s hair, kisses his scalp.

“Jean called me cute once—”

“Don’t, _shhh_ ,” Eren interrupts, not quite ready to leave this hazy happy place that smells like Armin’s hair, not ready to stop being Armin’s knight in damp armor only to return back to the reality of high school.

They stand there for a long time, Eren rocking Armin in his arms, the both of them clinging to something neither of them will ever talk about. It’s okay though, because Armin knows Eren inside out, and he knows Eren is going to stay the night without really having to ask if he wants to. All he does is lead them backwards towards his bed, helps Eren climb under the covers and laughs when he gets tangled up in the sheets trying to kick his jeans off.

It’s warm and safe beneath the covers, years of building forts perfected, years of creating massive worlds in the confines of a small town, with a boy who shows you things with words. Eren is half tempted to reach beneath Armin’s pillow for his flashlight, to ask Armin to find a book for them to read under here, even though he knows Armin lost that flashlight years ago.

“C’mere,” Armin murmurs quietly, and then Eren is quite happy to wrap around him again, to share the warmth of a bed almost as familiar as his own. Armin is safe, Armin is happy. Eren protected his princess, sort of.

Armin giggles quietly when Eren starts kissing his face- his cheeks, his nose, his eyelids. Armin gasps when Eren kisses his mouth, and makes a tiny and wonderful noise when Eren pulls away too soon.

“You’re not a faggot or a fairy,” Eren mumbles in between kisses, smirking when he can tell Armin is blindly searching for his mouth again. “Not a princess either- at least, not theirs.”

“But I’m yours, right?” Armin whispers quietly, and something warm - and kind of _final_ \- settles in Eren’s gut. It’s the first time they’ve mentioned it, in a way.

“Yeah,” Eren whispers back, pulls Armin close until their knees lock together, until Eren can caress the back of Armin’s calf with a socked foot. “You’re mine.”


	2. sleepy spooning sex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> original prompt: how about sleepy lazy Eremin spooning sex while still mostly clothed ;^; 
> 
> warnings for ambiguously underage thighfucking

when they were younger, armin was afraid of the dark.

not irrationally, of course. armin knew there were no such thing as monsters. eren didn’t realize it at the time, but it was more a creeping feeling of loneliness, an inescapable blanket over things otherwise familiar and safe.

it was a cognitive thing. which is how eren began to crawl out of his sleeping bag by armin’s bed, after thoroughly checking beneath the bed for monsters (armin might have known, but eren still had his doubts), and wiggled his way beneath the covers to hold armin while he slept. he let his lips lay lax against armin’s nape, mouth soft and perhaps a little daring in its intent for being only a boy at the time. but touch was reassurance, it was letting armin feel what he couldn’t see. it wasn’t quite a kiss goodnight, but it could have been their version of something similar.

it’s different now. with teenage bodies and rapidly aging minds. eren still crawls beneath armin’s covers out of habit, though they don’t have sleepovers as often as they used to. sleepovers are for girls. still, when eren’s bony knees straddle armin to climb over him, to position himself between armin’s body and the window, armin still relaxes the way he had when they were little, still sighs in something like relief and traces the spaces between eren’s fingers where they rest tentatively against his stomach.

eren’s mouth still rests on armin’s neck, open and warming the skin there. eren noses the tips of armin’s hair, smiles a little when he feels the telltale sign of goosebumps and squeezes armin’s fingers so they’ll stay attached to his.

"eren," armin murmurs sleepily. eren’s response is a raspy grunt. “i think i should tell you, i’m not afraid of the dark anymore.”

eren frowns, his arm tightening around armin’s waist. “so?” he inquires petulantly.

armin sighs, sounding pained and conflicted, and eren curses the sensory reduction of dark rooms. he’ll let go if armin asks, he’ll slide right back into the too-small sleeping bag and (grumpily) manage to fall asleep alone, eventually.

“so— i don’t know.”

eren huffs. “go to sleep,” he grumbles.

armin begins to shake like a leaf when he lifts eren’s hand from around his waist. eren is prepared to growl and put it back on his stomach where it belongs, but then armin presses his lips to eren’s knuckles, kisses the very tip of the knobbly bone at the base of his middle finger.

eren stops breathing, and when armin puts eren’s hand back onto his stomach, eren is struck with a sleep-hazed spike of bravery. he licks the back of armin’s neck, scrapes the crooked edges of his teeth along the curve of armin’s spine, and squeezes his eyes shut tight when armin moans.

and then, eren’s heart now beating so quickly he thinks it might burst from his chest to run laps around the room, nothing happens.

armin’s breathing is heavy, laboured, but he’s stopped shaking. there’s a pause there, like the darkness is alive and awaiting their next move. it feels electric, and eren can’t see a thing but he can _feel_ \- he can feel the way armin’s stomach jumps when he slides his hand up beneath the hem of armin’s tshirt, can feel the softness and the small amount of muscles there flutter when he strokes armin’s skin with the backs of his fingers.

they’re both in boxers and threadbare shirts, so eren knows his dick is pressing rather obscenely into the back of armin’s thigh, threatening to slip lower where armin’s legs rest one on ontop of the other. eren scoots his hips back, a product of an oddly timed surge of respecting armin’s boundaries, when armin breathes out a quiet utterance of “come back”.

eren is confused for all of two seconds, before armin reaches behind and pulls eren’s hips into his backside, wiggles a little once it’s there until eren’s barely clothed erection rests rather comfortably between armin’s thighs. he keeps shakily stroking armin’s stomach, toying with the soft hair that trails down from his navel, and is somewhat content with the notion that they might just fall asleep this way. he’d be comfortable with it, that is to say.

except armin isn’t falling asleep. there’s another quiet but significant pause, and then armin starts wiggling his hips again, pushing his hips back in slow, rhythmic movements. eren buries his face in armin’s hair, moans despite his own desperate efforts to stay otherwise silent.

eren ends up chasing the scent of armin’s skin, his mouth once again finding home on armin’s nape. he kisses him this time, licks and wets the skin so that his lips feel damp and swollen. he doesn’t really know what he’s doing, except chasing something familiar and tentatively off-limits. armin just keeps moving, rolling his hips, writhing enough that the soft rustle of his sheets sounds startlingly loud in the quiet of the room, his breath now panting and getting out of control. armin pushes back with enough force that the head of eren’s dick pushes through the slit in his boxers and rubs lewdly against the inside of armin’s bare thigh. he’s leaking precome, and it smears against the skin there. he almost apologizes for it too, except he doesn’t feel like moving his face from armin’s neck, and if he speaks it might break whatever spell they’ve cast surrounding them in the dark.

he doesn’t really think about it, just slips his hands down the front of armin’s boxers and groans when he feels how hard he is, how hot and soft the skin is there. armin makes a noise like he’s choking to death, and eren moans quietly because he can feel the head of his own dick pushing and prodding at armin’s balls.

“eren,” armin gasps, while eren carefully smears precome around the head of armin’s dick with his thumb.

“what is it?” eren replies lamely, breathless and beginning to wonder if he’s dreaming. he’s had them before, though never this graphic. armin sitting on his hips, petting eren’s stomach and then laughing quietly as he lifts his now sticky hands and says _“you’re all wet”_.

it’s _armin_ that’s wet, though, leaking like he’s coming. armin turns his head into the pillow, groans like he’s frustrated at something, and then he _is_ coming, spurting hot and all over eren’s fingers. eren keeps stroking him, touching him and spreading his come around like he’ll never get the chance to feel it again, the cooling warmth of armin growing soft in his hand. armin groans again, and then grabs eren’s hand from outside of his boxers to stop him.

“sorry, god, sorry,” armin whispers.

eren, very purposefully, pushes his erection further into the crease between armin’s thighs.

and then it hits him like a lit match, like someone’s setting off a firework in his belly and he can see it’s about to fizzle out into the air, but he doesn’t know how long he has to run away and duck for cover.

“armin,” he pants, now pushing his hips to meet armin’s unstoppable rhythm. “armin, i’m gonna come.”

armin hums, and then pulls eren’s hand out of his boxers by his wrist, lifts it back to his mouth. instead of kissing eren’s knuckles, he sucks two of eren’s fingers into his mouth, licks them clean of his own mess. eren’s voice breaks, cracks hideously and he bites down on armin’s shoulder to stifle the horrific noise he makes, and then coats the spaces between armin’s legs in his come.

“please don’t be sorry,” he begs quietly, his hips still moving forward, like he’s afraid to stop. “please, i liked it. please.”

armin’s bed must be a mess. his boxers are soiled, and armin’s are almost twice over, but eren is not at all willing to move. by the time they wake up armin’s thighs might be glued together with his spunk, but eren will pry them apart, apologize for the inconvenience, and still beg armin not to ever say sorry again.

“okay,” armin says, voice a quiet whisper, his body growing heavy enough with sleep that eren can feel the bed beneath them shift because of it. armin lazily laps at eren’s fingers, his palm, even his wrist. eren’s hand is coated in armin’s spit, but nothing else.

once armin falls asleep, once the rabbit footed thudding of his heart settles enough that eren doesn’t feel it reverberrate through his spine anymore, eren wriggles out of his boxers, wipes carefully between armin’s thighs, and then tosses them off the bed. his dick is a little hard again, solely at the soft warmth of armin’s skin embracing it as he sleeps, but eren simply tucks his arm around his waist, and presses his open mouth to his neck.

when the light comes back to the room in the morning, eren will be naked from the waist down, and armin might still be sorry, but eren will tell him not to be. eren will tell him that armin is allowed to be afraid of anything, but not him. the dark is a fleeting, temporary fear, but eren isn’t ever going away.

and, eren decides, sleepovers can be for boys, too.


	3. 90s punk/goth armin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> original prompt: was generally a request for long haired!armin which i combined with hairpulling, 80s/90slate 90s goth or punk armin, eren pining for armin, and more armin cockslut

Armin is changing.

It’s taken a while for Eren to admit. And yeah, maybe in the grand fucking scheme of things we’re all changing, but this is _Armin_ — Armin who lived in knit sweaters and cargo pants, Armin the once awkward preteen that knew more about books than albums, who cared more about grades than social status.

Eren isn’t exactly mister-pop-culture himself, but come on— seeing Armin clutching that portable CD player, all sharpied out and fading purple-black, over holding something in print (even comics would be an imaginable stretch, jesus) is not something Eren thought he’d ever live to witness.

There’s more to it, though. Things that make Eren kind of hate himself for noticing.

They’re eighteen now, so hooray for personal expression, but it feels so alien on him. The first visible trigger are the pants— trousers that cling to every inch of Armin’s legs, they’d look like fucking tights if it weren’t for the vague outline of pocket-shaped stitching. They’re tighter than the jeans Mikasa wears, all in dark tartan and black and white checked patterns, which give off a weird illusion of Armin’s legs being curvy.

Except it _isn’t_ an illusion, Eren confirms after many hours staring. Not an illusion at all.

He wears band tshirts that are two sizes too big, sometimes ripped or cut up to fit loosely around his shoulders, exposing skin. Black rubber bracelets stacked to the high heavens on his wrist, and his hair— it’s like he’s given up on the idea of a trim. It’s all wispy and feathered in that unintentional way Eren figures girls would kill for, parted down the middle, the tips of it brushing his shoulder blades.

Still blond, at least. Eren considers this a small victory.

They’re still friends and everything, that isn’t an issue. In fact, sometimes Eren wonders if he’s Armin’s only friend, even if Armin doesn’t seem to care at all. Eren’s even making new friends— Connie with his plethora of Smashing Pumpkins merch and his electronic drum kit, Sasha and her seemingly endless choker collection and her keychain weighed to the ground in lipsmackers, even Reiner who’s not even at their high school anymore.

So, maybe Eren is clinging to something— some trace of nostalgia, trying to fill a distinctly Armin-shaped hole in his core. Sometimes he even feels a little inadequate— his plaid overshirts and jeans entirely unexciting next to Armin’s industrial girly-goth whatever. Armin genuinely doesn’t seem any less impressed with him, but that doesn’t mean Eren isn’t going to seek reassurance, act like they’re the inseparable six year olds they once were, refusing to go anywhere without him.

It’s why he’s here now, the cool concrete rough against the threadbare material of his jeans, sitting beneath the underpass and trying not to look for the vague outline of Armin’s dick in those pants— just, curiosity. That’s all.

They aren’t even really doing anything. Armin smokes half a cigarette and then flicks it into the decaying grass sprinkled in litter behind them, the rumbling echo of the cars above them making it seem like Armin’s farther away than he is, all shrouded in smoke and distant.

“So, I got a piercing,” he says, out of nowhere, dropping it like a fucking atom bomb in the middle of suburbia.

“ _What_? Why?” is all Eren can think to ask, turning to glare at Armin like he’s offended.

Armin knows him too well. He catches the look and bursts out laughing, his hair wisping around his face like it does in those shampoo commercials for girls, all soft and touchable. Really it’s just the tunnel effect from where they’re sitting, and Eren imagines it must get annoying, after a while.

“Because I wanted it, that’s why.”

Eren glances at Armin’s ears, and they’re bare. Nothing on his nose, or his lips.

“Well, where is it?” Eren snaps, after a significant amount of time spent searching.

Armin snorts, and then very slowly— almost pornographic, actually— lets his tongue slide out of his mouth.

Jesus fucking _christ_.

“You got your _tongue_ pierced?” Eren shrieks.

Armin pulls his tongue in to speak. “Look at it,” he says, and then lets it loll back out of his mouth.

Eren grips Armin’s jaw, pulls and tugs until he can get a better look. It’s a round little ball with a picture beneath it— a bat, like the batman symbol but messier and cheap looking, magnified by the plastic beaded over it.

And— it’s fucking stupid really— but Eren can’t seem to stop looking at it. Armin’s still a little shorter than him, so he has this tiny bit of height advantage, even sitting down, and gripping Armin’s jaw while his mouth stays obediently open wide it just. It _does_ things to him.

Eren doesn’t realize he’s been gazing all slack jawed and heavy lidded at Armin’s mouth for any extended period of time until Armin whines at the pressure of Eren’s grip.

“Sorry,” Eren says in a daze, a spike of arousal hitting him hot in the stomach when Armin’s clicks the barbell against his teeth.

“You hate it, don’t you?” Armin says, not really upset but kind of expectant, tucking the flat curtain of blond hair behind his ear as he look back down at their feet.

“I actually don’t,” Eren concedes, and then he can’t look at Armin anymore because his eyes only want to focus on mouth or crotch, which just feels invasive, even if both are peacocked on display. “But it just… doesn’t seem like you.”

Armin kicks Eren’s foot planted on the ground, his metallic Doc Marten’s hitting Eren’s ratty old sneaks.

“We could go bowling,” Armin suggests out of nowhere, sounding quiet and shy. “It’s friday, blackout after 11.”

Eren grins, wide and stupid and totally helpless to the pieces of Armin he still thinks he knows better than Armin knows himself.

“Yeah,” he says. “Fuck it.”

—

Eren rides home on his bike, the metal of the grinders crunching against the cement of his driveway when he tosses it away. His mom is blaring T.Rex when he bursts through the door, and the entire house smells like patchouli and massage oils. He uses the open flap of his flannel to cover his face so he can fucking breathe, shouting at his mom to quiet the fuck down, even though she can’t hear him.

Up in his room, the faint echo of nasally over-permed vocals still manages to permeate the cracks in his walls, so he sticks his headphones on, plays through the Sneaker Pimps album Armin burned him. It’s really fucking weird, not like anything Eren’s ever heard before, but it kind of makes sense that Armin likes this now— this kind of hyper-femme vocals with dark backing tracks, it’s like the contrast of Armin’s soft blond hair and dark, skin tight clothes. It’s a clash, but that makes it interesting.

There’s homework to do, but Eren doesn’t do it. It’s late enough to justify an early night, at least. He thinks about calling Armin, but he imagines Armin sitting out on the roof outside of his window, maybe a tendril of smoke curling around his head, gazing up at the moon, sharpie smudge stains all on his hands from holding his CD player.

Eren rolls over in his bed, burrowing beneath the covers. He lies to himself for a while, pretends he isn’t going to think about it. But then the admittance of _‘it’_ being a thing only makes it appear on the backs of his eyelids like a phantom fucking projection— Armin and those pants that cling to him like a second skin, Armin’s hair slipping over his bare shoulder in pieces, what it would feel like for Armin to hover over him and have the hair tickle his neck from hanging down so low.

Groaning into his pillow, Eren turns onto his front. The end of this album is fucking depressing and low, so he doesn’t bother pulling it back when the movement nudges the headphones off his ears. His hands are already shoved halfway down his boxers anyway, no point in backing out now.

Jerking himself to the hyper-sexualized mental image of his best friend feels like the ultimate sin, but it doesn’t fucking matter when he closes his eyes and pretends. He bites the pillow and pretends it’s Armin’s thigh, all thick but taut beneath the pants.

He doesn’t feel like throwing up or anything afterwards, once his hand is sufficiently stickied and his jaw sore from clenching it, tensing around the muffled scream of impending orgasm.

It’s not that big a deal. He licked Armin’s tongue once when they were kids, curious and too shy to call it kissing, tasting sugar and the distinct _nothing_ of spit. It’s not so much a shock as it is regret, that it’s only getting worse the farther away Armin gets from him.

Thinking too much post-orgasm leads to an eventual blackout, and Eren is done trying to rationalize it all. Sleep is a welcome relief.

—

The next time he meets up with Armin is at the old rail tracks, where they used to pick blackberries at summer camp, the tracks all rotten wood and rusted steel, overgrown with weeds.

Armin is in the same kind of pants, red checkered this time, hugging every fucking curve of his legs and hips. Eren almost doesn’t notice it, but when he does it’s something like being burned, scalded and reacting without having a chance to really comprehend what the fuck just happened.

“What the _hell_ is this, dude?”

Eren yanks on a thick chunk of black stuck in Armin’s hair, half hoping it’ll pop out the way Sasha’s brightly colored extensions do. It doesn’t, Armin’s head jerks down with it, and Eren spares half a breath to feel like shit for doing it, except Armin’s eyes go all _dark_ — it’s confusing as fuck.

“It’s a strand test, I got a box dye.”

“ _Black_?” Eren shrieks, the sound of it fading out into the echo of the traffic nearby.

Armin shrugs, snapping out of whatever the hell it was that made his pupils go all fat, and pinching his eyebrows together like Eren’s slapped him.

“What’s wrong with black?”

“Nothing’s wrong wi— Armin, what the fuck are you doing?”

Armin flinches a little, his bony arms wrapping across his chest, gripping each respective elbow. His shirt is in shreds, Eren can see his fucking stomach. It’s kind of soft and not as skinny as the rest of him, cut off by the tight waist of those pants.

“I’m doing what I feel like doing, Eren, when have I ever told _you_ what to do?”

Eren sighs, gripping his own hair in frustration. “I’m not telling you what to do, I just. You have a fucking piercing, Armin, jesus. Like— I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.”

It’s kind of amazing what words can do— how they can seemingly hit harder than fists, how Armin can seem so delicate while being so cold and cut off. Eren might be trying to get a rise out of him, yeah, but part of this is all true.

“I think you just don’t _want_ to know me anymore,” Armin says quietly, walking backwards, his shoes crunching on the sparse gravel.

_I want to know you better than I know my fucking self_ , Eren nearly shouts, but he can’t. His throat is clogged with something, some thick emotion that won’t budge. Armin is walking away from him, and Eren can’t even manage more than a groan and hiding his face behind his hands.

Watching that familiar wiggle his ass does when he walks away just makes Eren feel like the ultimate dirtbag.

—

Armin is a stubborn piece of shit.

Armin is a fucking emotionless, pseudo goth, monolithic beacon of teenage angst. He doesn’t even seem upset that Eren ignores him at school, doesn’t act _any_ fucking different than he has for the past four months, just traipses around like he’s going through the motions until he can do something more dangerous with his life— like fucking groupies or shooting up black tar, Eren doesn’t even know anymore.

But, Eren is just as bad.

It’s why he all but throws his bike into Armin’s yard, stomps up the steps on purpose, making the old wood creak. It’s why he tosses the welcome mat aside, picks up the spare key from the groove in the wood and opens the door like he lives here. Armin’s grandfather isn’t even awake, sleeping on the couch like the dead.

He probably could be dead and Armin wouldn’t fucking notice, wouldn’t even care— he doesn’t seem to have any emotive response to anything outside of his fucking self, which is why Eren storms into Armin’s room and shouts, “You are the most selfish asshole I’ve ever fucking known.”

Armin rears backwards, a little less surprised by Eren’s sudden appearance than Eren might like, but his heart is thundering against his ribcage, and it would take too much pointed focus to care about something that minor right now.

“I’m selfish?” Armin asks, stepping closer to Eren, casual and quiet.

“Yeah,” Eren says, ready to burst out all the reasons why— _because you barrel through life without even telling me what you’re doing, because I feel like you’re trying to get away from me, because I think I’m lost without you around and you don’t even seem to care_ — but it’s too much. Armin is too close, invading his senses, approaching him like it’s nothing, like they haven’t been ignoring each other all week.

“Yeah?” Armin asks quietly, picking at a button on Eren’s shirt and making his stomach jump. He keeps his eyes down on his hands, doesn’t look at Eren, and mumbles, “Well, I’m sorry I guess.”

“What?” Eren exhales, bursts of relief threaded through with shock, huffing the atmosphere like releasing toxins.

Armin shrugs, his hand still on Eren’s shirt. “I know you’re getting sick of me now, I should’ve just stopped trying.”

Eren grips Armin’s hand, tries not to squeeze it out of confused rage. “Stopped trying _what_? What the hell are you saying?”

“Batman’s your favorite comic,” Armin mutters quietly, and Eren entertains the vague notion that he might cry— that Armin could well and truly end him right here, that he holds that much power over him.

“Is that why the…” Eren says, vaguely gesturing to his mouth, which at least gets Armin to look at him.

“Part of it,” Armin says. “I do really like the music, though. Even if no one else in our school does.”

Maybe that’s it, Eren realizes. There might be smaller reasons, a nostalgic grip on reality that refuses to release, certain things that Armin will always be. But maybe he really just _likes_ this shit now. The same way his mom has been obssessed with Marc Bolan since she was 19, the same way Reiner thinks Cobain was a living god(only _after_ he died, ironically).

Armin just likes weird girly gothic things, and Eren still wants to suck on his tongue the same way he did 9 years ago. Old habits die hard, some new ones come barrelling through with a similar amount of force.

“Please don’t fucking dye your hair black,” Eren blurts pitifully, at a loss for anything else to say.

Armin makes a tiny noise in the back of his throat, drops his hold on Eren’s button up and instead slides his arms beneath it, hugs Eren tight around his middle and presses his face into Eren’s shoulder. Eren holds him back without thinking, without the cognitive realization that if Eren gets hard here, he can’t hide it. He doesn’t really want to, though, which is new.

“What about just the tips?” Armin’s voice is muffled by the fabric of his shirt.

“I’ll cut them off,” Eren pouts, “Then you’ll look like my Armin again.”

Armin pulls back, grinning and failing to try and hide it. “ _Your_ Armin?”

Eren looks at Armin this time, realizes that Armin’s pupils are blown out so wide he can’t see the color in them anymore. Eren is about to ask if black tar really is a thing he’s gonna start, even though the idea was concocted by his own twisted imagination, but then he realizes Armin’s been staring at his mouth, and the proverbial hammer nails the rest of it home.

“Yeah,” he rasps out, deeper than he thought his voice could go. “Mine.”

Armin’s eyelids drops heavily, eyelashes fluttering, and it’s like looking at Eren from this close up is hurting him, because he whimpers and buries his face back into Eren’s shoulder. Eren just holds him there, strokes down the length of his hair, combs through the ends halfway down his back with his fingers.

“Your hair is so long,” he murmurs into Armin’s scalp.

And he can see Armin’s shoulders breakout into goosebumps, he can feel the shiver that follows his words.

“You can pull on it,” Armin says quietly.

Eren’s legs don’t feel as steady as they did two minutes ago. It feels like the ground is made of jelly, all uneven and disorienting.

He tugs on a strand of hair, mouthing out a silent ‘fuck’ when Armin moans into his shirt.

“I mean _pull_ , Eren. Harder.”

Eren trails his hand up Armin’s spine, lets the hair spill between the cracks in his fingers, and then balls it into a fist at Armin’s nape and _yanks_ back so hard that Armin shouts. It bares his throat, and Eren feels fucking drunk. He can see the jump of Armin’s pulse beneath the pale, paper thin skin of his neck.

Eren uses his other hand to grip Armin’s jaw again, like he did out by the freeway.

“Let me see it,” he commands, or rather whispers, refusing to moan at the way Armin so quickly obeys.

He doesn’t even have to ask what— Armin sticks his tongue out, showing the stud that was essentially bought for Eren. Eren makes the snap decision to lick at the balled resin, shivering at the sharp, high pitched moan Armin emits.

Tasting Armin’s tongue is heady, a familiar slick warmth, and without really intending to he ends up kissing Armin, sucking on his tongue while the wet slide of their lips keeps the noises they make as muffled as is probably humanly possible right now.

Eren loosens his fist in Armin’s hair, ready to let go and slow it down, kiss him like he loves him— which he does, he has for a long time. Armin snaps his own hand up, grabs Eren’s fist before it lets go completely.

“No,” he pleads, “I like it.”

Eren tightens his grip again, yanks Armin’s head back and dislodges their mouths without intending to. The angle is perfect for leaving teasing bites on the swell of Armin’s lower lip, Eren’s entire body flushing at the needy noises Armin keeps making.

“What do you want me to do?” Eren whispers, out of breath.

Armin is already launched into a sort of frenzy, his hands trembling around the button of Eren’s jeans, when he chokes out a quiet but firm, “Fuck my mouth.”

It’s like a gun goes off, the firing signal to open the flood gates, and Eren’s hand joins the tussle at his jeans. Armin gets it done first, yanks them open and down, shoving Eren back to his bed. Eren’s pants are trapped somewhere around his knees, making it more awkward than it needs to be, but Armin climbs over him, and at the first delicate, spine tingling brush of Armin’s hair against his hips, Eren squeezes his eyes shut and groans tightly.

Armin seems to change his mind on the position, tugging Eren until he’s standing again, and then sticks his tongue out much the same way he did when he showed Eren the piercing, open obedience and eyes brightly eager.

Eren’s cock feels heavy and almost foreign in his hands, a near out of body experience testing the wet heat of Armin’s exposed tongue on the underside of it. Eren can barely stand as it is, but Armin has always been a little demanding— grabbing Eren’s hand, he puts it back into the tousled tangle of his hair, drops his hands to his lap and pulls his tongue back into his mouth long enough to say, “I can take it, I’ve practiced with my fingers.”

Jesus _fuck_. If Eren thought he had enough visuals for late night sheet humping, he was wrong. This feels like ten shots of tequila— Armin shoving fingers down his throat, training himself not to gag, maybe tugging on his own hair.

Eren balls his fists again, slowly tightens his grip at the base of Armin’s skull. “Pinch me if you want me to stop, okay?” he says, feeling childish and full of that liquid kind of excitement he’d had when Armin let him taste the inside of his mouth when they were kids.

Armin only nods, and Eren pushes his dick into his mouth and damn near faints at how hot and tight it gets, how easily Armin sucks him.

Fucking Armin’s face is more pulling Armin’s eager mouth away from him then pushing him to choke— more trying to control the rhythm and Armin’s apparently ridiculous hunger for cock all while trying not to come embarrassingly soon. Eren gets it down to a slow rock of hips, his hand in Armin’s hair rough and pulling, but careful not to make him gag, to keep himself just out of reach enough to get Armin’s hands twitching in his lap, eager for more.

He thinks he’s got it to where he can control himself, hold out for a little longer until he comes, but then he notices the muscles in Armin’s forearm jumping, and then glances down to see Armin’s hands down the torn open front of his pants, fisting himself and getting off from this. Eren shuts his eyes, willing himself to hold out, but Armin keeps moaning like he’s desperate for it, like Eren’s cock is the one thing that’s been missing from his life, the one thing he’s been lacking from all of his otherwise brute adjustments of character.

It’s a wonder he remembers to, but he manages to tug Armin’s face away from him when he feels his balls tighten, ready to spill, and he whimpers when Armin lolls his tongue out again, angling against the pull of Eren’s fist to become a welcoming receptacle for Eren’s spunk. He comes all over and in Armin’s mouth, coating the cheap plastic piercing, and Eren collapses back onto the bed once he’s done, out of breath and his jeans all bunched around his ankles.

Armin swallows it, licks it from his lips. Eren hears this more than sees it.

Armin starts kissing Eren’s knees, moving towards the insides, tongue tracing up the beginnings of his thigh, whimpering like he already misses having Eren’s dick in his mouth. It’s ticklish enough to get Eren bolting upright, and he nearly dies when Armin sends him a silent but pleading look, his hands still furiously working beneath the waistline of his trousers.

Eren falls to the ground with little grace, shoves Armin backwards and then tugs his pants as far down his hips as they’ll go, which isn’t much. It means he can only get just the head of Armin’s cock in his mouth, wet and swollen, pearling precome that sticks to his soft stomach. Eren laps all of it up, pushes out his lips and sucks only the underside, and Armin dirties his torn up tshirt when he spills hot all over it, only just missing Eren’s face.

Eren falls back on his backside, dazed and naked from waist to ankle. Armin vaults up his hips from the ground, tugs his pants up, and then flops back like a dead fish, panting up at the ceiling, barely able to catch his breath. His hair is still a mess, tangled in the vague shape of Eren’s fist.

“I still like you,” Eren blurts, stuck feeling vulnerable and perhaps a little stranded, his jeans like ankle cuffs, his cock going pitifully soft against the inside of his thigh. “I never stopped, I always did. I just thought you’d get bored of me.”

Armin laughs breathlessly. “I thought _you’d_ get bored of _me_.”

Eren fumbles getting to his knees, his legs shaking as he pulls his jeans up as best he can, before flopping down on his back next to where Armin’s all sprawled out like a starfish. He turns his head to look at him.

“I won’t,” he says sincerely, and then, “Do you really like it when I pull your hair? Seems like it would hurt.”

Armin grins, sending a spark up Eren’s spine, residual from five minutes earlier. “I like that it hurts. It’s a good hurt. Do _you_ like it?”

Armin means the pulling his face on and off his dick, Eren knows, but he’s still a little new to walking around this with words, so he lifts a hand to comb patient fingers through Armin’s messy hair, and says, “You don’t need to cut it. Just don’t dye it.”

It feels like paradise in here, which is odd. It’s like they’re laid out on a tropical beach, bodies warmed to the core and heavy with the soaked up heat of the sun— not stuck on knobbly hardwood in the middle of autumn. Armin rolls onto his side, still grinning, and kisses Eren’s hand.

“I meant the face fucking,” he murmurs quietly.

“Fuck yeah,” Eren breathes without thinking, his groin tightening again. He spills it like thoughts instead of words, the way one might read body language as a counter to things spoken. Armin’s cheeks go a little pink, his smile widening— if that were even possible.

“Good,” says Armin with renewed vigor, all perky and bright eyed, kissing Eren’s hand once more before jolting up off the ground.

Eren’s head is about two blocks behind everything else, only slowly sitting up when he realizes Armin has his thick silver scissors in his hand.

“Wait Armin, don’t—”

_Snip_.

Armin pads over to him, brimming with a quiet energy, his smile like a secret they’ve perhaps always known. He drops the thick strand of black into Eren’s palm like a dead limb, the rest of his tangled blond hair still, thankfully, in tact.

“Why?” Eren asks lamely, as Armin leaves the scissors on top of his desk.

“Because I trust you with even my poorest decisions.”

It’s macabre and ridiculous, and while it’s a part of this new black exterior, it’s still so typically _Armin_ that Eren can’t help but laugh.

“Trust me with the good ones too, and we’ll call it a deal.”

Armin drops to his knees, holds Eren’s still slightly blissed out face in his hands.

“Deal,” he says, and this kiss is a promise.


	4. spanking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> anonymous said: "heeeyyy can you write something with armin getting spanked? or with cockslut armin (technically both can tie into the same prompt but it's rlly up to you!)"
> 
> eren/armin | boarding school au | warnings for spanking, minor D/s themes, sensory deprivation, bonding(tying), underage pre-sexual experimentation, and stuff along those lines | rrrrated yeah
> 
> this was a vague au i always wanted to try where armin and eren go to boarding (high)school together and have grown up together and spent literally every waking minute of their lives with each other but they never fight and people sort of think of them as a freakish anomaly
> 
> \------------

It started when they were kids.

Way back when things were more curious than arousing, when pushing limits felt like breaking rules. It was a simple concept, even despite its flaw of only applying to one of them - if Armin was bad, he would get spanked.

Only Eren couldn’t hit very hard when he was eight years old, not like he wanted to. It was just kind of a thrill to have Armin’s shaky weight on his lap, to smack his rear end with only half strength, getting dizzy off of the tiny little sounds Armin would make. They never took their clothes off, and they would laugh about it afterwards, Eren teasing Armin for his face turning so red.

It’s a little bit different now.

“Where are you?”

“Here,” Eren says, though he doesn’t move.

The light from the moon bathes the room in an almost eerie blue glow, making Armin’s pale skin seem luminescent. He’s standing before Eren now, in the dark of their dorm, his chest rising and falling in these heavy sounding shallow breaths. His eyes are closed, at Eren’s request, while he holds out his wrists on offer to Eren, presses them together, his hands in loosely curled fists.

He’s beautiful like this, and it took a little bit of time to make the connection. That the dizzy feeling he felt when they were children meant something - that it wasn’t just a rush from breaking rules, that it was  _wanting_  Armin like this, and feeling the rush of knowing he wanted it too.

“Use your tie,” Armin says, his voice paper thin, barely more than a whisper. He lifts his hands a little, gesturing to them almost, while his eyes stay obediently closed.

Eren slips the tie from around his neck, the uniformed colors of their school lost in the dark like this. He takes Armin’s hands, wraps the tie around them as best he can, despite the silk slipping a few times, and then ties a knot in the middle. Armin could so easily escape, but he won’t, and that seems to be the appeal of this game, for both of them. Armin’s hands are trembling, Eren can feel the delicate shake of his fingers, so he lifts the bound set of wrists and kisses the back of Armin’s hand.

“You need to be punished,” Eren says, as firmly as possible, while still stroking a thumb across Armin’s knuckles, holding his hands like they’re something precious, not to be dropped.

Armin exhales this shaky little sigh, almost a laugh with the way he smiles at the same time. Eren wants to kiss him now, doesn’t want to wait, but it’s better if he resists the urge.

“I know I do,” Armin whispers.

Eren takes off the rest of his uniform to steady himself, keeps his boxers on out of some misplaced urge for modesty, like he’s shaming Armin somehow by being fully in the nude when they do this, even though Armin has told him it’s okay. It’s their last year of high school, and something about it makes Eren wonder if this is something that will disappear with it - like the ritual of class, cliques and gossip.

“Come here,” Eren commands, tugging the knot on Armin’s wrist to guide him, Armin’s pale, thin legs stumbling over the mess of clothes in the dark. Eren keeps him upright, keeps him safe, as if it’s all he’s ever known how to do.

When Eren sits on the bed, rigid, the backs of his knees pressed to the edge of the mattress, it comes to that time where Eren nearly panics. Where he thinks Armin maybe doesn’t want this as much as he does, that what they’re doing is wrong. It must stem from their childhood experimentation and how it always felt like breaking rules, because they’ve talked about it now, since then.

Armin kneels on the bed at his side, with Eren guiding his hip, until he’s leaning over Eren’s lap, slowly lowering his full weight down on him.

“Keep your eyes closed,” Eren says, when Armin turns his face to the side on the mattress next to Eren’s thigh. His hair falls all over his face, so Eren strokes his fingers through it, pulls it back from his fluttering eyelids and tucks it behind his ear.

“Tell me how bad I’ve been,” Armin begs, his voice so broken by need that it makes Eren’s stomach flip.

“Really bad,” Eren replies, forcing himself to keep his voice stern and steady, to keep up with the game. “I’m going to punish you good. Twenty licks for getting a B on your math homework.”

Armin laughs a little, not really breaking the scene with how breathy and similar to whimper it sounds. Eren sometimes struggles for things to punish for, but Armin never seems to mind the ones he comes up with. Eren smooths his palm over the curve of Armin’s ass, taking in the sight of his thin hips lifting, tilting towards Eren’s hand, his body craving the lingering sting of Eren’s palm.

Eren brings his hand down, not at full strength but hard enough to get that satisfying clap of skin against skin, and Armin jerks in his lap, grunting. Armin’s so hard already, Eren can feel it, the tip of his cock leaking a damp spot onto his boxers.

He counts beneath his breath, continuously bringing his hand down on Armin’s ass, the tips of his fingers tingling from it. Armin’s skin starts to turn pink and hot, the flush of aroused warmth travelling down his thighs and up his back, making his whole body feel like it’s raised ten degrees in temperature.

On the last smack, Eren keeps his hand against Armin’s backside, presses his palm into the heated skin, only slightly abused and pinkened. Armin whimpers beneath him, his breath choppy, his hips continuously tilting forward, pressing his dick into Eren’s thigh. Eren starts to rub the swell of his ass, kneading softly, appreciating every inch of skin Armin has allowed for him to touch.

“Good boy,” Eren mutters, his breath as unsteady as Armin feels in his lap, trembling and so close to coming.

When Armin lifts himself with his shaky arms to get off of Eren’s lap, Eren collapses backwards on the bed, his heart threatening to tear through skin with how hard it’s beating. Armin flops to his side, their skinny bodies aligned, and Eren turns to look at him in the dark, his hair a feathered mess and his eyes heavy, pupils completely blown.

“I need,” Armin says, and he doesn’t have to finish the sentence, Eren already knows. He reaches down, takes Armin’s cock in his hand, uses the prolonged wetness of it to make it slicker, easier. When Armin tugs on Eren’s hip, to get him on his side also so they’re facing each other, Eren brings his cupped hand up to spit in it.

“Both, yeah,” Armin says, his hips rocking forward into Eren’s, Eren wet palm working over both their dicks in tandem, Armin having sloppily tugged his boxers down enough to reach. Armin whimpers, his head dropping to the bed, and then he nuzzles his way in between Eren’s face and the mattress.

“Ah,  _fuck_ , Armin-”

Eren comes all over them both, their stomachs covered in sticky fluids, which Eren shamelessly wipes up to use on Armin, lets his softening cock drop from his hand to grip Armin tighter. He’s stopped moving his hips now, just keeps whimpering with his face pressed further into the mattress, and Eren knows what he’s waiting for.

“You can come,” he says, right into Armin’s ear.

Armin shouts a little as he does, almost on cue, spilling in short little pulses into Eren’s cupped hand.

Eren kicks off his boxers, already halfway down his thighs, and uses them to wipe them both off. And now it’s his favorite part - it’s rolling Armin onto his back, watching the way he grins bleary and sated, up at the ceiling. It’s pushing his hair back from his face, cupping both of his cheeks and kissing him. The way Armin’s mouth so eagerly opens, like this might be one of his favorite things too, makes Eren whine into his mouth, kneeling over Armin’s hips and trying not to tickle him like he sometimes does when his sticky, spent cock trails over his belly.

“That was a good one,” Armin says, panting and out of breath. “Twenty,  _god_.”

Eren hums his agreeance, kissing all over Armin’s face, and his neck. He kisses every inch of Armin he can, until Armin’s laughing and Eren’s arms give out, too tired from holding himself up, the left one even more so from the strain of twenty cuffs.

They fall asleep like that, Armin still half laughing in that way that makes it sound like you’ll never know happiness until you know this boy, and Eren’s limbs heavy, both of their legs tangled together. It started when they were kids, and Eren only hopes it will never end.


	5. devolved/de-aging titan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> from tumblr: eren/armin | drabble for an au where eren devolves from a titan to a human, where hanji thinks there is a 'cure' | warnings for canon typical mentions of violence and death
> 
> \----------

When they first meet Armin is only small. A child at his mother’s side, barely tall enough to peek through the iron fences to where they have Eren chained. Eren remembers him distinctly because of his golden hair, soft wisps of it framing his round face in the quiet wind. He also remembers the innocence of him, the way Armin was the only face Eren saw that didn’t look angry.

There isn’t enough space between the fence and the shackles of the chains that bind him. It’s how three villagers were killed last time - mauled to death by unhinged jaws and wild, unseeing eyes. Eren gets afraid for Armin, hears his mother’s panicked call when Armin slips from her grasp, stumbling towards Eren at full speed.

He seems to fall, his hand ripping at the ground when he rights himself, and then he’s there, a tiny mouse stood in front of a mountainous beast. The sun glints off the child’s hair, makes him seem almost angelic. He reaches out his dirt scuffed hands, opens his palm to reveal a bright yellow flower.

Eren can’t take it from him - his arms are bound, and if they weren’t he would probably crush Armin without meaning to. Still, Armin drops the flower when a soldier tugs him away with too much force, Eren involuntarily growling at the way the boy yelps in pain.

His mother scoops him up into her arms, takes him away, and Eren’s heart seems to tug along with him. He’s a monster - to even touch a thing like Armin would mean to break him. He’s done enough damage already.

.

When Armin is fifteen he’s drafted into a research team led by adults. Hanji Zoe is his leader, more a mentor than anything. It means Armin can come nearer to him now, means Eren can look at him up close, can remember the soft curve of his cheek and wonder what it must have been like to watch him grow up.

“Do the chains hurt him?” Armin asks Hanji, staying one step back, more out of respect than fear. They’ve moved him underground - the cool, humid air seems almost normal now, organic.

“No, he’s long since stopped struggling.” Hanji looks up to Eren almost fondly, places an open palm on his hulking ankle. “He’s the only one who hasn’t regressed.”

Armin seems to study him then, staring so hard it feels almost physical, if a gaze could carry weight. Eren is much smaller himself now than he was when Armin first saw him, less a monster and more a creature - something undesirable but not all dangerous. He’s been sedated for too long for that.

“He doesn’t look happy,” Armin says, and his tiny frown makes Eren think his heart must be human still.

“He will be once it’s over. He will be the first to be cured.”

If ever there were a time to speak it would be now - it would be to tell Armin that his happiness lies in a crumpled heap on the sil of the window, the remnants of the flower given to him by the only human that ever seemed to think him worthy of holding onto something delicate and alive. He would tell Armin he kept it, that he always will.

Instead Eren sits in silence and watches. He watches Armin shakily tuck his chin length hair behind an ear, and then tries to mimic the action himself. He feels his cheeks ache in something like a smile when Armin laughs delightedly.

“He can learn,” Armin says, gazing up at Eren with the kind of wonder people usually reserve for Gods or heroes. His skin has begun to slowly grow back over his teeth - maybe his smile isn’t as terrifying as he thinks it is.

“Of course he can,” Hanji says, her tone sharp enough to snap Eren back to looking down at the ground, shamed. “He’d be dead if he couldn’t.

.

Armin goes away for a while. Eren thinks he maybe found a wife, took some time to start a family, left the cavernous pits of the research hovel for something a bit more dignified. Eren is much smaller now, weaker too. He can use human sized restraints, cuffs they wrap around thieves’ wrists, the cell still enormous and empty. They’ve given him clothes too, robes that cover him, his blood cooling down. He shivers at night still - it isn’t quite enough to stave off the shock of feeling the cold after so many years.

He can’t speak yet, but Hanji is trying. Guttural grunts and hums seem to be enough to please her, even if it is a little insulting that she speaks like he can’t understand what she’s saying. He could speak before she was even born.

“I have a special treat for you tomorrow,” Hanji says, brushing Eren’s hair from his face. It’s easier to touch him now, less threatening. He really must be the size of a man, judging by the limited scope of vision he has down in the cellar like this. “If you’re good.”

Hanji looks at him like he’s dying. Eren knows he must be, feels it in the brittle dust of his bones, the thinness of his blood. Still, his heart is alive enough to flutter with hope.

.

“Armin,” Eren gasps, wheezes.

The boy is there, within reach, but he isn’t a boy anymore. He’s still slender and slight framed, but he’s grown taller, the edges of his face sharper with age, his hair pulled back. He smiles sadly and walks forward, Hanji brimming off to the side, watching with rapt attention. It’s a staggering shock to realize that Armin and him are the same height now - that he can finally look Armin in the eye.

“You remember my name?” Armin asks, his voice still light, so good sounding - it makes Eren’s eyebrows pinch.

“Yes. I would never.”

Hanji seems to want to pipe in, bouncing off in the corner of the cell, ready to come to Eren’s defense. It isn’t a broken sentence, he just isn’t sure what else to say. He still has the yellow flower, or what’s left of it, resting on the tiny concrete lip beneath the bars of the only window down here.

“I want to take you out of here,” Armin whispers, dipping his head. Eren’s chest fills with air, with unbridled hope and fear. He nods his head, and Armin says to him, “But they won’t let me without military envoy. I won’t do it if you don’t want that.”

Eren shakes his head sadly. “I’m too weak.”

Armin’s face falls, though surprise is not evident. “Hanji said you might be.”

“But you’re here.” Eren says, and then they’re both smiling, both so similarly, lips pulled back over teeth, the way a smile was meant to look.

.

When Eren passes it’s quiet.

There are military and medical staff out in the hall before the cell. Hanji looks to have not slept in days, and Armin won’t stop crying. He’s older now, threads of grey shimmering alongside his golden hair. Eren wishes he were strong enough to tell him it’s okay, it will all be okay.

The windowsill is too high to reach now, for any of them without a ladder. He wants to take what’s left of the yellow dust, to place it in Armin’s palm and tell him it’s him, that he’s the reason he made it through. Maybe Armin will find out another way, or maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe it never did.

Hanji refuses to call it a cure, thinks it more a slow death. He’s human, they say, but they never trusted it enough to let him out of here, to uncuff his ankles and unbind his wrists. Armin shouts at the military personnel every time they refer to Eren as “it” or “thing”, and Eren loves him so much he thinks it must be the force of that feeling that’s killing him - it has to be.

Armin doesn’t say goodbye. He kneels, touches Eren’s pallid and damp forehead and tells him, “Until we meet again.”

.  
.  
.  
.

This boy looks like sunshine. His eyes are bright and his tiny arms are full of books. Eren is old enough to be in his class, and he’s almost frightened by the intensity of feeling just looking at him gives. He’s too young this time to truly understand it.

He’s new in town, so the boy bounds right up to him, slips a little on a wet patch of cobblestone and says eagerly, “I’m Armin, what’s your name?”

Eren laughs, not unkindly, but Armin beams up at him in response.

“It’s Eren,” he says.

Armin takes his hand, a childish mimic of adult acquaintances.

“It’s nice to meet you.”


	6. baths then and now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> from tumblr request of 'eremin shower/getting clean?' - warnings for underage (if you consider 16 underage) and childhood nudity.

When Eren and Armin were kids they would take baths together sometimes. It was always innocent, and more a chore than anything else, but being in there with Armin somehow made it more fun. Eren would splash Armin until he sneezed, and would stare in confusion as Armin held Eren’s small hands, tried to read the lines of his palms beneath the ripple of the water.

The water would slosh and their knees would knock together, slippery and sharp, and Armin has always, always bruised so easily, his skin soft like a peach. There would be an accidental kick, a stilted yelp, and then Eren would apologize by offering to wash Armin’s hair. He was only five, it felt like the right thing to do.

Eren being not much taller than Armin meant washing his hair ended up being spilling water and soap suds all down his face. Armin squinted his eyes and let a soft _‘ah!’_ escape his mouth as Eren would scramble to his knees, careful not to bruise Armin a second time.

He would wipe his face, his hands soft and wrinkled from the water, smear the soap away from Armin’s pale lashes until Armin could blink his eyes open, the edges of them rimmed red and sore looking.

“Sorry,” Eren would say, “You move too much.”

“Sorry too,” Armin always replied, blinking blearily at his friend.

By the time they were through - or grew bored, whichever came first - the water would be lukewarm and the inches of skin above it would start to chill. Armin’s shoulders would shake as he shivered from the cold, and Eren would press his legs outwards, sandwiching Armin’s smaller thighs between his own and the edge of the tub, as if that tiny point of contact would prove enough heat to warm them up.

It never did, and when Armin would stand from the tub, naked and shivering, Eren would leap up for the adult towels, the big fluffy ones. He’d scrub roughly at his own hair and then wrap the towel around Armin and himself, pulling him in close, tightening his grip. Body heat is a thing that is learned, not told, and for Eren it was Armin who taught him the best way to keep warm.

Armin’s skin was always slick but cool, his body still shaking against Eren’s, huffing out small puffs of laughter as Eren struggled to use a corner of the towel that wasn’t wrapped around them to blot some of the water out of Armin’s thick hair. Armin would shift forward to give Eren more excess towel to use, and he’d end up with his nose pressed to Eren’s neck, breathing hard, the warmth of it shifting the temperature of the room rapidly. Eren can still feel that point on his neck like it’s got its own pulse, a sensory trigger that he will always associate with the boy he grew up with.

 

 

It’s a little different now, though.

 

 

Now, eleven years later, when Armin presses his nose to Eren’s neck, it’s a precursor. They’re clothed - just. Armin in boxers and Eren’s band tshirt, Eren in flannel pants with nothing underneath. Armin nuzzles Eren’s neck, just seems to fit right there, as if Eren’s body had grown around the shape of his mouth, and Eren’s hands tremble where they’re placed on Armin’s sides.

“Let’s have a bath,” Armin says - or giggles, really, because he’s a such a sap for nostalgia.

“Okay,” Eren breathes, biting back a whimper when Armin takes a step back.

Armin pulls Eren’s shirt up over his head, seemingly deliberately slow, even if the action ends up ruffling his hair and turning his cheeks bright pink from embarrassment. He hates having attention on him, which Eren can never seem to wrap his head around. It’s a wonder they work, because Armin has his attention all the time.

By the time the water is going, it’s loud enough to mask the heartbeat thudding in Eren’s ears, watching closely as Armin leans over the tub to test the temperature of the water. When he stands up his stomach trembles, and he’s still so soft. Skinny as all hell, but no sharp edges, his belly like the girls Eren’s seen in his gym glass. Even his flushed pink nipples seem soft, though they’re peaked and hard now from the cool flush of air that hits them. He’s tenting his boxers too, but Eren won’t look at that until they’re in the water.

Armin makes it too hot, not surprisingly, so Eren has to hiss and wait for every couple of inches of his skin to adjust to the temperature. Armin dives right in like it’s nothing, so it means Eren is standing hunched over Armin’s head, his hands holding his balance on the tiles of the wall. Armin gets that playful little smile, the one where he bites down on his lip to stifle it, and then leans up on his knees, the water sloshing around the rise of his hips. He mouths aimlessly as Eren’s half-hard cock, making Eren curse and shift one of his hands from the wall to rest on the back of Armin’s skull. Armin doesn’t suck him, just kisses and licks, presses his nose into the soft skin right to the side of his hipbone.

“Move,” Eren mumbles, because Armin clings, and he still bruises too easily for Eren to just sink down into the numbing heat of the water.

Armin shifts and then once Eren's sitting he climbs into Eren’s lap. The slippery side of his thighs slotting between Eren’s and the edge of the tub feels achingly familiar. Armin starts to move, pushes his hips forward so that the tip of his bobbing cock presses into Eren’s stomach, only barely brushing past where he wants it to.

“You move too much,” Eren groans when Armin makes a little frustrated noise because of the lack of space, desperate to push his hips down further. Eren holds him still, smoothes the trembling in his thighs by rubbing his bony hips with his thumbs, and then pushes up.

The water already seems to be cooling, despite that damp heat that hovers in the air, making little beads of sweat stick Eren’s hair to his forehead. Armin presses his face into Eren’s neck again, wraps himself around him the best he can, and rolls his hips. They’re too big for this tub, it isn’t meant for two nearly grown boys, but the slick slide of Armin’s shaky body is enough, it’s all worth it.

Eren snakes a hand between them, slows Armin down again by squeezing his hip, and then forms a loose fist around them both, lets the slosh of the water beneath the surface and the gentle friction of his hand do the work.

“Ah, Eren, Eren-”

“Shh,” he says, because Armin used to be the quiet one, and Eren still isn’t used to how willing and easily he begs. He tilts his head to the side, licks the salty sweat from Armin’s temple and then kisses him there. “Feels good.”

Armin rocks his hips enough to get water splashing over the edge, and Eren is too close to slow him down. Armin kisses Eren’s throat - or tries to - to distract himself from moaning as he spills in a burst beneath the water, his come clouding the little bit of water trapped beneath their bellies.

He would ask Armin to suck him off now, but he knows with how his thighs are trembling that his knees must be sore, that there isn’t enough room in here from him to crawl down the length of his torso. He jacks himself in his fist, whimpers and comes as quiet as he knows how when Armin leans up to slip his tongue into his mouth. He learned that trick from Eren.

“We need a shower,” Armin pulls back, laughing, his arms slung loose around Eren’s shoulders.

“Yeah,” Eren says, “We’re a mess”


	7. aggravated assault

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> from tumblr anon request: "au where eren and armin (and mikasa) grew up in a rougher part of town, eren gets sent away to juvi/jail for a year or so on an assault charge, he comes back a little different than what armin knows but he missed eren dearly; they try to pick up right where they left off"
> 
> (warnings for mentions of assault, homophobia, aggressive behavior, sexual content, + other things along these lines, please read at your own discretion)
> 
> \-----

It’s been a year.

Twelve months, three hundred and sixty five days - or really, three hundred and ninety seven, if you count all the court dates leading up to it.

It’s been a year and Eren is finally coming home. Armin should be elated, should be bouncing off the fucking walls with relief, but a year is a long time when you’re eighteen. Especially when the whole city thinks your best friend is a criminal, and berates you for liking him, and the only defense you have left on the street is off on a pre-law dual enrollment course. All Mikasa had said about it was, “One of us needs to know how to save his ass.” Armin tried not to be offended.

-

Armin spends almost five bucks printing page after page of job prospects out at the library, quickly and messily highlighting the ones he thinks are important. Mikasa waits impatiently, bored looking, which makes Armin grumble and stuff the papers hastily into his bag before slinging it over his shoulder. He can’t tell if she’s extra tense because they’re going to pick Eren up, or if she really does think she’s better than him now. He realizes it’s the former when she grips his hand in front of the correction facility, stopping them both before they enter.

“Should we wait out here?” Armin questions her, his own palm beginning to sweat.

“Um,” she says, and Armin has never seen her lost for words. “No, let’s go in,”

-

Eren really doesn’t look all that different. He looks tired, oddly small in the clothes he’d been incarcerated in, the shadows around his eyes only somehow emphasized in the artificial light of the front lobby.

He smiles when he sees them, shaky and a little sad. Armin lets Mikasa move to him first, because she isn’t much for affection, but he can tell she needs it now. When she steps away from hugging him Armin still doesn’t move, isn’t sure if he should or not. They’d done more than just hug as boys, and for some reason it feels like the people in here can smell it on him, like it’s a disease he carries.

Eren looks hurt for all of five seconds, before stomping over to Armin and taking his face in his hands. Armin makes a tiny, choked sound in his throat while Eren’s hands slide to the back of his hair, gripping his skull, and then his face is pressed into the space below Eren’s shoulder, right where he always seems to fit.

Armin doesn’t cry, but Eren wipes the wetness gathered on his lashes with his thumbs anyway.

-

“I can’t apply for any of these,” Eren says, flipping through the papers and dropping each one he deems useless. Mikasa sits on the counter in the kitchen, her heel just slightly tapping impatiently against the wood.

“You can, look at the ones I highlighted -  _‘no criminal background check required’_  or  _‘participants in the Convict Re Immersion Program’_. Look, most of them only require drug testing, nobody cares about what you did in the past.” Armin picks up the scattered pieces of paper, shoving them down with a heavy palm on their rickety breakfast table, forcing Eren to look. He spent an entire day looking for all of these.

He knew Eren would be bitter about it - right before he was convicted he’d just gotten his first real job out here, an executive admin assistant at a staffing firm. They’d gotten drunk the day after he’d gotten his official offer, both Eren and Armin making haughty faces with mock-pompous accents and saying,  _“That’s_ Mister _Executive Admin Assistant,”_  while Mikasa rolled her eyes and pretended she wasn’t amused.

“Even the re immersion programs around here require background checks,” Mikasa pipes in, sliding down off the counter, and Armin grits his teeth. For once he feels like the stupid one in this situation, and it isn’t a nice feeling at all. Eren still won’t look at him, just keeps thumbing the edges of the papers Armin’s still holding beneath his palm. “They’re mostly for people with possession or traffic violations. Even theft, if they don’t require handling money.”

Eren tips his head up to look at Armin, finally, a self deprecating smile on his lips. “Not many guys on the ground floors wanna hire aggravated assault, I guess. Should join the NFL, they’d love me there.”

“Stop it,” Armin scolds, and then rips the papers away from Eren, slumping down in his seat to glare at them, as if he could’ve known this by just reading their small trivial descriptions.

“I have class,” Mikasa says, and then leaves through the front door quietly, her usual cold goodbye.

Armin feels Eren staring at him, tries to stop frowning so hard, but it’s no use. He looks up, lets the papers fall back to the table, feels stupid for every single stroke of neon pink on the pages, as if they’re tick marks for how naive he still is.

“I’ll find you something,” Armin says firmly.

Eren smiles again, this time warmer. He reaches his hand across the table, picks up Armin’s fingers and squeezes them until they stop shaking. “I’ve missed you,” he says.

-

Armin remembers the phone call.

_“I think I just killed someone. Jesus fuck Armin, I think he’s dead, man. He’s not breathing, there’s too much blood for him to breathe.”_

Armin doesn’t remember what he said back, though. The panic hit him like swallowing lead - grounding him and making him feel ill, all at once. Eren was sobbing out nonsense through the phone, and Armin hadn’t been able to do a single thing to try and help him.

_“-called me a fucking faggot, Armin, I wanted him dead, this fucking guy-”_

It felt like wading through water in the wrong direction. Mikasa was gone, school stuff again, and Armin was making Eren’s favorite dinner - spaghetti with the kraft mac and cheese sauce and tinned meatballs.

_“-say something, Armin, please, man, please, I need you right now, I love you, you know that right? I love you so fucking-”_

_-_

He wasn’t dead, thankfully. Aggravated assault, they said. Beat him nearly unconscious, it’s better this way,  _you’re lucky you’re not going to jail on attempted fucking murder kid, you got lucky._

-

Eren catches Armin sitting up on the roof, his knees pulled to his chest, the soft stretch of his sweatpants only just staving off the chill of early morning. Eren never used to be up before nine am without an alarm, so it’s a little strange to see him walk up here now, with his fists stuffed into his pockets. He takes a seat next to Armin on the concrete, leans back against the brick and tries to make smoke rings with the fog from his mouth. Armin laughs and shoves weakly at his shoulder.

It must be the laugh - something triggers Eren into whimpering, turning his body enough that he can bury his face in Armin’s shoulder. Armin’s instinct is to hold him, but his hand grips a warning squeeze on Eren’s nape when Eren starts to lick his neck.

“What are you doing?”

“Missed you,” Eren mumbles. “Told you that.”

Eren persists, sucking on Armin’s pulse point, and Armin can’t stop the slow trickle of realization - at where Eren was for the past year, and how that connects to the fact that Eren used to hate doing this outside of the cover of darkness and their blankets.

“Did something happen?” Armin asks shakily.

Eren huffs, the warmth of his breath seems to reach all the way to Armin’s stomach, crawling down his chest. “Yeah. ‘Case you forgot, I just got back from a year long vacation.”

Armin pulls Eren’s head back to glare at him. When Eren makes a sudden lurch upwards to bite at Armin’s chin, Armin’s stomach flips, breath hitching in his chest. Armin’s wanted this so bad in the past that it made him ache, but this doesn’t feel-

“I mean while you were away. Did something happen?”

Eren sighs angrily, pulls away from Armin and then slumps back down until his head thunks back against the brick behind them.

“No, Armin, I was not someone’s prison bitch, alright?”

Armin frowns. “I just. Don’t understand why all of a sudden-”

“Is it really so fucking sudden, really Armin?” Eren bites, and Armin can see he’s angry again, doing that thing where he bares his teeth and tightens his jaw. “Why don’t you go a whole year without someone to talk to and see how much you miss the one person you know you can be yourself around.”

Armin slumps back himself this time, too afraid to look at Eren when he’s like this. Not because he’s angry, but because Armin feels so, so guilty. As if to make it worse-

“You only came to visit me three times. Why?”

The yellowed tint of the sky begins to lift, turning bluer as the sun rises over the buildings up here. There’s car horns honking in the distance, way down below them, and Armin can barely hear them. He knows the honest answer -  _because I hated it there, because I was afraid of you, because I can’t hold your hand in front of a room full of convicts and their visiting families._

“Was too hard,” Armin says, his throat tight.

Eren stands, and very purposefully slams the iron door behind him on his way back down the stairwell.

-

His probation officer is the one who gets him a job.

It isn’t much. Stocking shelves overnight at a grocers. But all they required was a drug test, and it’s got the added bonus of a third shift differential, so it’s good. It’s good.

Eren sleeps most mornings, as he is already prone to doing, but having him gone in the evenings makes Armin feel infinitely more lonely than he did when he was locked up, which makes no sense at all. It’s like he’s avoiding Armin, which Armin thinks is probably fair, but it’s Mikasa who sets him straight.

“He thinks he’s stayed the same and it’s us who’ve changed.” She tears pieces off of her bagel, rolls them into little balls and pops them delicately into her mouth. She is different, Armin’s noticed. He’s been half-wondering for a few months now if she’s hooking up with some rich kid from her class.

“Everyone changes, why is that something to get upset over?”

“Because it doesn’t feel that way when you’re stuck looking at the same four walls for twelve months.”

She stands, squeezes Armin’s thin shoulder, works at an ache he didn’t even know he had with her thumb. She moves to leave, but then shoves the rest of her uneaten bagel beneath Armin’s nose. “You know how to fix it. I don’t have to tell you.”

-

Armin stays up and waits. Mikasa is gone for the night, definitely staying at someone’s house, more than likely fucking whoever it is that got her a Starbucks card and maybe even gave her the little braided leather bracelet she’s always wearing. He waits on the couch, his chin resting on his knees, and just after three, Eren walks in.

“What are you doing up?” Eren asks, pausing a little in the middle of shucking his hoodie.

“Waiting for you,” Armin says, and decides to be as sincere and honest about all of this as possible, his heart thudding so hard he thinks he can hear it echo in the confines of his ribs. “I don’t like it when you’re gone.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Eren scoffs, but then he moves to stand in front of Armin, hands at his sides, waiting. Armin lifts his chin and looks up at him, slides his open palm up under Eren’s tshirt.

“You know they said you could get up to twenty years? That’s what the lawyer told us, to expect that. To expect to not see you again until we’re both almost in our forties.”

“Glad you had faith in me,” Eren huffs - soft though, like Armin rubbing his belly is keeping the venom out of his voice.

“It’s not you I didn’t have faith in. If I could’ve taken the hit for you I would have.”

Something about what he says seems wrong, false. Armin couldn’t do a damn thing, so maybe it’s just irrelevance that pushes Eren away, gets him walking to his room. Armin follows him, strips off his own shirt when Eren discards his into a pile on the floor.

Armin doesn’t ask, and Eren doesn’t seem to mind. He just lifts the corner of his covers once he dives into bed, and Armin scrambles in beside him, shoving a thigh between Eren’s legs and wrapping his arms around his waist.

He says into Eren’s chest, lips dragging against skin, “I’m sorry I didn’t. I just. I wanted it to be over, I wanted to see you here, not there.”

Eren grunts softly and pushes Armin until he’s on his back. He licks at Armin’s nipples, teases them with his tongue until they're pink and almost sore, until Armin is gasping quietly, pulling on Eren’s hair. Eren licks down his stomach and then kisses Armin’s navel like he might kiss his mouth - all wet and soft.

Armin should say something. He should say he’s missed this, but he wants it on the rooftops in the mornings too, wants to walk Eren to work and wait for him to come home, wants to tell Mikasa that they’ve been doing this for years - as if she doesn’t already know. Wants to tell Eren he can’t do that shit anymore because it killed him, to have that drop-cliff dread of wondering if you’re going to have to wait a quarter of your life to see your other half again. Wants to tell Eren it’s okay if he fucked other guys in there, he isn’t mad about that, but Eren tugs Armin's loose sweats down his thighs and sucks his cock deep into his mouth without preamble and the words lose their way, tangle into a knot in his stomach instead.

-

Mikasa announces she’s moving out of their shared apartment.

“I’ll still pay my half of the rent,” she says, her head tipped down.

“No you fucking wont,” Eren snaps, his fist hitting the table, and the chair makes an awful noise as it scrapes in efforts of moving out of his way when he stalks back to his room.

“I will,” Mikasa says to Armin, and before Armin can say a word she says, “Let me do at least that.”

Armin doesn’t argue with her.

-

They’re one person down and now the both of them share a bedroom. Their place is too big for the two of them, so Armin spends his days looking for work and new places to stay. Studios, lofts, single bedrooms.

He’s growing to love Eren’s shift time, because it means being woken up from half-sleep with Eren’s arms sliding around his waist, fingers digging into the warmth of Armin’s skin, his face pressed into Armin’s hair.

Sometimes he reaches a hand down Armin’s front, fucks into his closed thighs from behind, growls into Armin’s ear when he comes. Eren has definitely changed - he clings a lot harder, holds Armin’s hand whenever they go someplace, takes showers with him whenever possible. Armin still has his suspicions about something happening - and maybe it isn’t even bad. Maybe Eren met a boy he liked, maybe saying goodbye tore him up, knowing he couldn’t be in both places at once.

Or maybe Eren was completely alone, and decided he never wants to feel that way again.

-

By the time thanksgiving rolls around Armin has a new job and Eren has been promoted to team lead on his shift at the grocer. They’ve downgraded to a studio apartment in an old industrial conversion project that Armin loves, all original wood floors and peeling paint on the windowsills.

They have thanksgiving together, just the three of them, in Eren and Armin’s place. Mikasa’s place is much nicer, of course, but her boyfriend is off home with his family, and when he’d invited her she declined and said she had her own family dinner planned.

Eren’s probation ends in a month. He’ll still have a record, but it’s something.

“To family,” Mikasa says, lifting her glass and glaring as Eren picks another marshmallow from the top of sweet potatoes.

Armin tips his glass in her direction and then grins into it when Eren hooks his ankle around his beneath the table, tugging until their shins touch.

To family.


	8. stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> from tumblr prompt meme: 6-things you said under the stars and in the grass
> 
> \----------

eren’s back aches, leaning against the scratchy, overgrown roots of a familiar old tree, from back when the walls still stood and escaping felt like the only solace. now, here, eren is a man, and no one can keep him in a cage.

"armin, do you remember when we were kids?" eren asks, head pillowed on his hands, knuckles scraping against bark, gazing up at the stars scattered between leaves. "you told me a story about the stars being people, living a second life up in the sky, where islands floated among clouds. do you remember that one?"

the wind rustles the branches overhead, and in the distance eren can hear the ironwork of machines, engines, technology. there are the faintest streaks of grey sweeping across the sky, remnants of the clouds of steam that now billow out through pipes into the air.

eren’s hands begin to ache. he drops them from behind his head, lets his fingers rest against the cool touch of the earth. it sounds like armin is whispering, but he’d lost half of his hearing years ago. it’s hard to tell.

"i think i always hoped it was true," eren says, laughing. "now we have dirigibles, ships that float on air. but you’re a liar because i went up there, and there was nothing."

eren digs his fingers into the ground, crushes weeds between skin and bone. the fog fades into the night, and eren’s heart feels like thunder in his chest.

"you lied to me all the time, didn’t you? it’s because you knew i couldn’t read, you made everything up," eren says, and the silence accompanying the accusation is deafening. eren’s breath hitches, caught on something like a rib, stumbling through the hollow path of his chest to get out, just  _get out_. “and you lied in that story, because even though the islands were a stretch, i still believed that stars were once people. but they aren’t. when people die they lay in the ground, and i can’t believe-“

eren gasps over a startling sob, a kink in the works. he’s angry with himself. it always ends this way, every time.

"i can’t believe you aren’t a star. they said finding your body was a blessing, but it isn’t, i hate it. i hate that you’re beneath the ground, you were never meant for this earth, armin."

he hears someone approach, knowing full well who it is, the only person it could possibly be. they stand in silence, as tall as the tree and about as wise. a hand rests on his shoulder, squeezing. eren shuts his eyes and pretends the whisper of wind against his face is armin’s voice, telling him, promising him, that he never once lied, not about this.

"i think it would have been better," eren says, this time to mikasa, because he knows armin can’t hear him now. he’s old enough to stop pretending. "if we hadn’t found him. i would spend the rest of my life looking for him."

"i disagree," she says, quietly, always respectful of those who might overhear. armin told her the same stories, maybe she believes.

eren drops the crushed dandelion from his palm when he leaves, looks back on the city that made them and aches. the stars out here are always glittering, never at peace. 

maybe it’s better this way after all.


End file.
